


Imposter Games

by Vrunka



Category: Naruto
Genre: Improper use of ninjitsu, M/M, Unrequited Love, handjobs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-18 20:22:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13689129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vrunka/pseuds/Vrunka
Summary: The things we do for love.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gayfishman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayfishman/gifts).



> Gayfishman dragged me back to my childhood love of Naruto and then commissioned this from me.

The imposter is impressive; even Gai must admit that much. Near-perfect. Every hair in place down to the cool frown he’s giving Gai, the turn of his lips caught in spandex, the tightness around his visible eye.

“I don’t have time for this,” the man who looks like Kakashi and yet is not Kakashi says. Even his drawl is perfect, Kakshi’s lazy, even tone. “I have more important things to do then—“

“I’m sure, I’m sure,” Gai pressures, reaching out to brace a hand on the man’s shoulder. Sturdy; flesh under spandex that Gai has felt before. But the real Kakashi would never be caught so easily. 

The imposter’s eye goes wide. A brief, flash of panic. He tamps it down quickly, the moment is no more than that, a breath and it’s gone. Blink and it’s missed. But Gai isn’t blinking and he knows Kakashi better than he knows anyone.

His fingers tighten on the stiff material of Kakashi’s vest. Gai licks his lips. “You’re good,” he says, offhandedly. “I’ve never seen one this good before.” He leans closer. Taller than Kakashi, always has been, and with scant inches between them the imposter tilts his head to meet Gai’s gaze. Which Kakashi—the real Kakashi—never would. The jut of his chin all wrong, exposing his neck, a weak point that Kakashi would know and would protect from being exploited.

“But you are not him.”

“What?” The imposter asks. Bravado. Bluster. His mouth quirks into a smile, a winkle in the mask to match the one of his nose. Kakashi, Kakashi to a fault. Someone has been doing their research. “I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about, Gai-San.”

And there it is.

The mistake.

The imposter seems to realize it as soon as the honorific has left his mouth. Gai is always just Gai to his Eternal Rival.

“I mean,” the Imposter starts to say. Shaking his head. Kakashi’s silver hair flashing in the low, drawing light.

Gai doesn’t let him finish. Stops his squirming with a hand around his throat. Uses his strength to push the two of them back. The imposter’s breath catches, hisses from the mask and across Gai’s chin as Gai slams him against the alley wall.

Tactical planning isn’t usually Gai’s strongest suit, but he likes to think he’s been learning from Kakashi.

No one will bother them here.

And Kakashi never would have made such a blatant error.

“Drop the henge,” Gai says, quick. Low. A threat.

The mouth beneath the mask moves, lips forming some sort of argument. Gai’s hand squeezes. The man who is not Kakashi arches, his eye rolls up, his fingers dig at Gai’s wrist.

There is a pop.

The smell of sulfur, thick and acrid across Gai’s tongue.

Kakashi’s silver hair is gone. Replaced by a familiar bush of brown spikes. Tan skin around the eye that is a deeper brown than Kakashi’s; slimmer throat beneath Gai’s palm. Gai’s grip loosens.

Tenzo slips free from his grasp. Leans back against the alley wall. Panting.

Tenzo.

Who is usually so by the book, so strict and exact.

Tenzo.

“Tenzo?”

The man flinches. He shoves the headband up, glares at Gai with both eyes. He is frowning beneath the mask, the same shapes in the material that Kakashi’s mouth would make.

“It’s Yamato,” he says, voice cracking a little. Hand moving to message his throat. Eyes still narrowed. “Hasn’t been Tenzo for a long time.”

A few years maybe. It feels like forever since Gai saw him last. And maybe never before without the Anbu gear. 

“Why are you walking around as Kakashi?” Gai asks.

But that’s stupid isn’t it. Tenzo—Yamato—is the one other person in Konoha who shares a relationship with Kakashi. A past. Kakashi’s bad influence, nurtured by time.

Tenzo looks away. His eyes, briefly, flutter shut. “It’s just...sometimes when Kakashi-san is...” he trails off. His expression hardens, difficult to tell with no visual on his mouth, but Gai is an expert on it at this point. “An errand,” he says. He crosses his arms.

Gai can practically taste the ‘Anbu business’ that should come next, that remains unsaid. Kakashi is secret service no longer, no matter how many of the scars he still carries from it.

“And you do this often?”

Tenzo bristles. Just a little. Not nearly as good a showing as Kakashi can give, but it’s close. “I do it enough,” he says. Dismissive. “Now I really do need to be—“

He’s shifting as he says it. Fingers moving through the seals. And then he is Kakashi again. The perfect replica.

Or almost.

Gai watches, silent as Tenzo turns and scales the building behind him. The real Kakashi would teleport, Gai doesn’t throw the accusation after him. He’s never particularly been one to gloat.

—

He’s also not one to brood.

So when Tenzo—Yamato—shows up at his apartment later that night, minus Kakashi’s headband and Kakashi’s vest and Kakashi’s mask, Gai is actually quite taken by surprise.

“How did you know?” Yamato asks, sharply. Someone who has been brooding over the thought, turning the interaction over in their head.

“What?” Gai asks. Because it is easier than inquiring what Yamato thinks he’s doing climbing through Gai’s window like he is Kakashi.

“Months. I’ve been...running errands for Kakashi-sama for months. Wearing his clothes and,” he licks his lips. They are different than Kakashi’s, thicker, darker. He shakes his head so hard it’s a wonder the bracer he always wears doesn’t go flying off. “No one, not even the Hokage has been able to—has called me out on the forgery.”

Gai should probably feel more scandalized that Kakashi has been sending Tenzo in his stead to meetings with Tsunade. His sense of honor should be rankled.

It says a lot about who he has become that it isn’t.

He shrugs. Smiles. It doesn’t seem to help. Yamato frowns harder.

“How could you tell,” he says again. Less a question this time around. Needling, jabbing persistence.

“Kakashi has a limp.”

Not really. More a hitch. A tightness in his stride on days like today when it is overcast and rainy and cool. An awkwardness in his hip, a leftover reminder from a Sand Ninja he had skirmished with some years ago. The details of the job escape Gai here and now but the memory of injury does not.

Yamato shakes his head. “I would have noticed. Accounted for it.”

Gai shrugs again. He makes the motion larger than maybe strictly necessary. “He hides it well. You have to know to look for it. He most likely still bears the scar. If you ask he may show you.”

Gai himself has only seen it a handful of times since that first time. Since it happened. Bloody and gouged and peeking from behind Kakashi’s torn trousers. Shifting as Gai carried him back to where the medical team could intercept them.

Sworn to secrecy then and Gai wonders idly if this counts as telling.

He doesn’t think so.

Tenzo doesn’t press for more details about it anyway. He seems lost in thought. The word brooding comes to mind again, mostly because of his dour expression. The sad tilt of his eyes.

“How many people has he had you meet?” Gai asks.

He does not ask: have you ever met me. The answer is as obvious as Tenzo’s heavy frown. Gai is special. The how’s and why’s don’t need to be examined here.

“Plenty. Mostly...for...for what he calls boring, logistical check ins.” The younger ninja settles, seating himself on Gai’s window sill. Knees spreading. “Any updates on Jiraiya though—or on Naruto—those he attends to himself.”

Sentimental; out of the character Kakashi wears so well. It makes Gai smile. Maybe Tenzo reads to much into it, he frowns harder, slips a finger beneath the bracer to scratch it down his chin. Squarer than Kakashi. Blunter.

“Are you going to report us?” Tenzo asks. His voice doesn’t tremble. Us. Like he had any say in hatching this deceit when Gai knows full well the force of Kakashi’s influence.

“No,” Gai says. He should probably elaborate. Explain that it’s not for Kakashi’s benefit that he isn’t turning on them. But the lie would be flimsy and disingenuous, and Gai is neither of those things.

Tenzo bites his lip. Nods. He stands, fingers curled around the windowsill. Turning to go. To leave.

“Do you want me to show you?”

It stops Tenzo’s escape. The younger ninja pauses, tilts his head. “Show me?”

“His scar. The limp. I can instruct you, if you wanted.” He is something like a teacher after all. The fact that this is a line almost straight from Icha Icha means nothing.

No one could ever accuse Gai of being as unscrupulous as all that.

Tenzo’s eyes narrow. His fingers leave the window to clench at his side. Little ticks of mental calculations. Little tells that being Anbu should have broken him of.

“Okay.”

It’s all he says.

Okay.

He removes the bracer from around his head. Lets it drop to the floor. His fingers touch his chin again, run from his jaw to his neck and back.

“I don’t have the mask,” he says.

“I’ve seen his face before.”

A few times, not nearly as many as Gai would like. Even between Eternal Rivals, friends, the best ones, some barriers remain. That’s just how it is with someone as walled as Kakashi.

Tenzo nods. His hands move, the same hypnotic pattern from the alley. Twisting, sinuous signs with his fingers.

Actually seeing Kakashi’s face, his full face, makes Gai’s breath catch the tiniest bit. The henge is perfect down to the mole. He isn’t thinking when he steps forward to brush his thumb against it. The bump of imperfection in the alabaster skin is warm and rough.

Tenzo’s breathing is uneven against his fingers. Just a little stuttered.

Gai snatches his hand back, blushing. He grins. “It’s amazing,” he says by way of an explanation, “really. I meant it earlier. I’ve never seen an imposter so good.”

Shadow clones don’t even come close. There is a lack of physicality to them, a lack of warmth and depth. Tenzo is a person. A body.

Alive.

And frowning again. Gai wonders if he ever smiles. Even wearing Kakashi’s face, the expression carries all the strict melancholy of Tenzo.

“It’s not perfect though, if you could see through it,” he says. Gai doesn’t take the tone he says it in personally. “So. Teach. I’m listening.”

“It’s an old wound.”

From when Kakashi had two eyes that were his own.

Gai steps closer.

Tenzo does not retreat.

“He was sent on a mission,” the details are still escaping him, the specifics. The Springtime of His Youth lost over the lazy drag of time. “I had tagged along; I thought that I could learn something. I was...rather Obsessed, at the time.”

He had known, back then only that he adored Kakashi as a rival, as a power to match his own. Over the course of that old, long ago mission, he had realized of course how much deeper his feelings ran.

Not that Tenzo needs those details. His eyes are distant, gaze trained somewhere around Gai’s ear. He is not wearing the Sharingan, Gai realizes with something of a start. The scar bisects his brow and cheek, but the eye is Kakashi’s old one. Brown and deep and secretive. Closed off.

“There was more than Kakashi had anticipated; I suppose. Or more than the report had stated. He killed most of them unscathed and without my assistance. By the time I had caught up he was...mostly winded, maybe slightly scratched. And then the Sand Nin entered.

“He was an adult. We were...”

Barely. He bites his tongue but the word does not leave him. At the time Gai remembers thinking they were very brave, very mature; his own students probably feel the same though Gai now knows how very Young and Blossoming and Fragile they are.

But Tenzo was Anbu, so he must also understand. He nods, once. Kakashi’s fingers cradling his elbow, arms crossed. Listening.

“He had this...suicidal style of fighting and Kakashi is usually so cool but he...I don’t know. He was tired, from the fighting, or something. The Sand Ninja lunged. Kakashi didn’t roll fast enough. He took a kunai in the hip.”

Gai lowers his hand, fingers spread, and presses his palm to the flat of Tenzo’s hip. Kakashi’s hip, beneath Tenzo’s clothes. Sharp bone. Smooth skin.

“And it hurt him enough he still has the injury today?” Tenzo asks. Skeptical. His voice tight.

Gai does not move his hands.

Tenzo does not make him.

“No. He probably could have walked it off. But there was some sort of seal etched into it. Some...strange ninjutsu.”

Gai remembers Kakashi falling. His legs giving out as his skin tore open; sand exploding from the wound. Gouts of it. Blood clotted. Ripping free of him. Right to the bone.

“It tore him up.”

Kakashi’s expression is tight. Gai’s fingers tighten in their hold. Right along his hip where the sand had come roiling out of his body.

“They thought he might never walk again. But if you know anything about My Eternal Rival then you know...”

“He was up in two weeks, doing everything they told him not to.”

“More like six days. It was very bad those first few months. And then it wasn’t so bad. And then almost no one was left alive who really remembered it had even happened. So it was almost like it didn’t. Kakashi certainly acts like it didn’t.”

“I’ve never noticed it before.”

“You see him naked often then?”

It’s a tease. A joke. But Kakashi’s face does little to hold Tenzo’s frown, the darkness in his eyes. Something Gai doesn’t feel to pressed to define.

He shakes his head in apology.

“It’s right here,” Gai says. Curling his fingers to trace them over the rough material of Tenzo’s trousers. The star-shape of it, twisted healed skin, scarred and sewn together.

Tenzo’s breath escapes him in a puff, warm air tickling Gai’s ear. There is tension in his neck, in the way he still has it craned un-Kakashi-like to look up into Gai’s face. His fingers brush where Gai’s are still tracing the shape, mirroring. How appropriate.

And Gai shouldn’t feel that way—because Tenzo is not Kakashi, is not even his friend—but he does. He cannot help the shortness of his breathing or the way his lips are suddenly dry, dry.

“Show me.”

Tenzo says.

His hands are undoing his belt. His eyes are locked on Gai’s.

“You surely do not mean—“

“It’s a challenge, Gai,” he says. And he sounds fucking so much like Kakashi that Gai aches to believe him.

Even if this isn’t how he wants it. Even if this is the perverted, twisted up wrong version.

“I’ve never known you to back down from a challenge,” Tenzo teases. Kakashi teases. “A forfeit would count in my favor though, wouldn’t it.”

It’s a step too far.

From sanity and stopping to...

Well to the Glorious Pitfalls of Pleasure and Youth that Gai had thought long behind him.

He nearly blacks out from how quickly his blood diverts south. How fast he’s getting hard in his spandex. His fingers twitch on Tenzo’s hip—Kakashi’s hip; giving himself completely over to the fantasy of it.

Kakashi shucks Tenzo’s pants down his thighs and the skin revealed in the wake is pale pale pale and gorgeous. Unmarked.

Gai’s fingers dig into it, pressing hard enough to leave slight red marks. He watches, gluttonous, the way it makes Kakashi’s dick twitch. The rough edge cutting straight to the core of it.

Whether it is Kakashi’s kink or Tenzo’s; the detail matters little. Gai crowds against him, and Kakashi’s belly shivers under his touch as Gai always imagined that it would. He moves his hand again, gracelessly tracing from Kakashi’s hip to his cock.

Kakashi groans against his chin. Warm breath. An artless wave of his hips, pressing his cock into Gai’s grip. Thrusting and sloppy and so, so, so satisfying.

Too good.

Too wrong.

Gai can’t seem to work an angle where he can slot them together, the math problem of their limbs and their height difference is too great. Kakashi would probably have a solution, but Tenzo is too busy digging his fingers into Gai’s hair, breathing out his pleasure against Gai’s mouth.

Selfish.

Loud.

Fitting for the character Kakashi so often plays. Another dissonance from the man Gai knows so well.

But it doesn’t matter.

“Gai,” Tenzo is saying, voice catching, halting over the -san he isn’t supposed to add.

And Kakashi’s voice, broken in that way that only pleasure can achieve, is all that Gai has wanted to hear for years. Years.

It’s ages ago and Kakashi is weak from blood loss, hands hanging limply around Gai’s shoulders as he is piggybacked to where the medical team can rendezvous with them. His hair is tickling Gai’s cheek and his eyes are distant and he is dying, probably. And he says: “Gai. I guess I should—“ but he never finishes the sentence.

And Gai never asks him to.

“I’ve got you,” Gai says; he had said it then too. Kakashi’s hair tickles the same way, pressed between the apartment wall and Gai’s body. His eyes are just as distant.

Gai twists his grip, maybe a little too hard, a little too enthusiastic, and Tenzo shudders in his arms. Curses, low in his throat.

“I’m gonna,” he says. “I guess I...don’t know if I can—“

“It’s okay. You can drop it.”

Kakashi bites his lip, frowning, eyes closing to slits. His expression breaks and somewhere in there the ninjutsu fails. His come splashes hot in Gai hand, sticky and warm and Tenzo’s; Tenzo is the one leaning against him. Panting. Turning his face to breath against Gai’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he says. So quiet Gai almost misses it. “I wanted to do better than that.”

A matter of personal pride; Gai understands. He doesn’t mention it. Never one to gloat, at least not in this sort of an arena. He doesn’t ask why Tenzo did this, incited this. He doesn’t ask why Tenzo’s never been sent to see him before.

A special case.

Kakashi’s special case.

“May...” Tenzo takes a breath. Stands up straighter. Gai is still in his space; he realizes it slower than he should, steps back. Tenzo’s come drips from his fingers. Messy.

Messy.

“I’ll come back tomorrow,” Tenzo says. “You can...show me again. If you wanted. I’ll practice,” he says, “until I’m able to fool even you.”

Gai should say no.

Gai should have said no from the start.

He licks his lips. Forces a grin. “A challenge then,” he says. “Don’t expect I’ll be bested so easily though.”

Tenzo fixes the bracer on his head. He nods once. Solemn, serious Tenzo. “Count on it,” he says. And then he is gone.

Out the window and over the balcony.

It’s only when he is gone that Gai goes to the kitchen, finds a dish towel and wipes his hand clean.

A challenge, a challenge.

Digging his own goddamn grave.


	2. Chapter 2

A few days later and the scar is looking better.

Spindling and tough when Gai rubs his fingers against it.

Kakashi on his bed, on his back, staring up at him while Gai inspects the workmanship. Lip between his teeth. The mask pulled down to hang around his neck.

“It’s good,” Gai says. Thumb running a circuit over the bone, circular patterns that remind him of the Sharingan. “Very authentic.”

Kakashi nods. Tips his head. “You see him naked often then?” The words mirrored more viciously then when Gai had said them. A glass-like edge of jealousy hidden within Kakashi’s grin.

Gai shrugs. “Would you be here if I did?”

They both know the answer is no. They haven’t addressed the real issue here, the underlying why that keeps Tenzo showing up. Why Gai keeps letting him.

Desperation can only write off so much of this perversion. This disloyalty to Kakashi.

“Do you want to fuck me like this?” Kakashi asks. His legs are already spread, Gai fits so perfectly between them. He’s not wearing the spandex suit today; that move was premeditated.

“Do you want me to?”

The wide-eyed nod is another Icha Icha staple that Gai is steadfastly ignoring. If Kakashi actually found someone else to read those terrible books then that is on him; Gai can imagine it now, Tenzo pouring over each volume.

“But do you want to?” Kakashi asks with a grin. Wry. His knee knocks against Gai’s side, digs into the ribs. “I wanna hear you say it.”

Gai bites his lip. Nods. His bangs sway heavy in front of his eyes; already sweaty. His cock, covered but already hard, jabs against Kakashi’s thigh as Gai shifts above him. “I want to fuck you...Kakashi.”

That and so much more. He wants to make love to him. To be with him. Fully. And always. With Kakashi.

Kakashi.

He swallows, harder then he means to when Kakashi flexes to drag his cock down Gai’s abs. When Tenzo moans in that perfect parody of Kakashi’s voice.

Is this what he sounds like? What he likes? These unashamed, unabashed noises curl through Gai’s gut. Guilt and arousal and yearning all twisted up together.

He wants him to stop.

Gai needs him to stop.

He presses his lips, hard, to Kakashi’s mouth, fucking his tongue in. It’s not gentlemanly or gentle; but Tenzo wearing Kakashi doesn’t seem to care. The moaning dies in his throat replaced by a hungry sort of keening.

Which Gai can deal with wholly better. He folds his arms beneath Kakashi’s knees, presses them up and up and up toward Kakashi’s chest. Pinning him.

Another one of those fantasies of his. That Kakashi would allow himself to be manhandled like this. That Kakashi would enjoy it.

As Tenzo so clearly is. His ragged breathing stutters against Gai’s mouth. His eyes twisted shut. The scar is so vivid against his skin.

It’s almost no surprise when he finally gets a finger curled into Kakashi’s ass that it is already slick for him.

Tenzo, for whatever reasons he has for doing this, has been extremely economical in his choices. Straightforward to a point about what he desires.

But Gai is nothing if not prudent and thorough in all aspects of his life, so it isn’t until he’s worked three fingers in and stretched them around that he even thinks of shucking his own pants down. And Tenzo. Well Tenzo makes it look so easy.

He arches Kakashi’s back as Gai sinks his fingers to the knuckle. He grunts and heaves and breathes through Kakashi’s mouth, his scarred chest. His nipples which are peaked and vulnerable in the chill air of Gai’s apartment.

He gives an all over pretty impressive show.

And Gai is taken.

But he isn’t fooled.

He drags his light sleeping trousers down, kicks them free with barely a thought. His cock—still hanging heavy between his thighs, guilt-free and shameless—is red at the tip. Fully erect. There is little and less use in denying it.

He presses against Kakashi’s ass, shifts his hips to rub his shaft along the crease, head digging against Kakashi’s balls in a way that must be somewhat uncomfortable.

“Yes, yes, yes,” Kakashi says, heady and thick. Like his tongue is too swollen and heavy. “Fuck, Gai, do it.”

It’s enough. Close enough to Gai’s fantasy.

His cock slides into place. Head catching on the rim of Kakashi’s ass, slipping slightly until Gai braces a hand to press it home fully. Kakashi’s body, opening beneath him, is everything Gai has ever dreamed.

Kakashi’s mouth, kiss-pink, tortured, an open little oh of pleasure. His eyes slits. His fingers anchored in the sheets. And the scar of his hip, right under Gai’s hand.

The skin shivers.

Even only half-way in, the feeling travels up Gai’s cock and settles in his spine.

“Are you okay,” he asks.

The pleasure is faltering. Shrinking. Kakashi’s expression has turned distressed. More and more of Tenzo seeping in.

“I...I can’t.” A breath. Too quick. His breathing and his fluttering pulse. Panic. Panic. Gai can practically taste it. He goes to pull back, to pull out, but Tenzo’s legs—Kakashi’s still, slim muscles, nearly invisible hair—tighten around him. “No. No please.”

“If you aren’t—“

“I’m not weak,” Tenzo grits. Kakashi’s teeth bared. The idea is absurd. Gai would never insinuate otherwise. “I can do this,” he says. “I can do it.”

“You don’t have to.”

“You want to fuck him, don’t you?” Tenzo asks.

Gai doesn’t answer.

He swallows. He touches Kakashi’s mole, rubs his thumb over it like he had that first day.

“I can hold it,” Tenzo says. “I’ve got it under control.” His hips shift, pulling Gai flush against him. “Just fuck me, Gai, I’m strong enough to take it.”

It was never a question of strength. Not with Kakashi. Not with Tenzo.

But Gai doesn’t know how to say that. Not when he’s buried to the hilt in a body that he has lusted for for so, so long. He swallows again, licks his lips, nods.

Okay.

Okay.

Tenzo, true to his word, holds the illusion through six whole thrusts. His body arches when Gai pushes hard, rolls his hips to fuck deep, deep. And between one in motion and one out, Tenzo is Tenzo and he is no longer Kakashi.

It’s just how it is.

Gai doesn’t comment on it. He closes his eyes and finishes. Quicker than he means to, an unsatisfactory orgasm. He pulls out still hard, tugs his pants back on before Tenzo can say anything.

—

“We shouldn’t do this anymore,” Gai says. Three days later. Five bouts of sex later.

His conscience has always been a little slow on the uptake.

Kakashi, not even through the window yet, blinks at him. His eye narrows.

“Some greeting,” he says. “I expected you would at least be kind of happy to see me.”

Gai realizes his mistake a fraction too late. The guilt he has mostly staved off for the better part of a week rolls through him in a wave.

He hasn’t seen Kakashi—this Kakashi, the real Kakashi—in days.

And he has barely even missed him.

Some friend.

Some Eternal Rival.

Gai sits on his couch, collapses down onto it. The transgression is like a punch to his gut. No, worse than that, he knows how to roll with punches, with physical stuff. It stabs like a blade, right in between his ribs.

“I...I am sorry, Rival, I—“ what can he say. What on earth can he even say that isn’t just cheap justification.

“I thought you were someone else.”

Kakashi leans back against the wall. Crosses his arms. Easy motions. Almost too easy.

Gai has never been paranoid but suddenly the thought turns over in his mind. Tenzo pretending, filling his jealousy with some cruel game like this. Imitation taken to the next level.

“Until I’m able to fool even you.”

But no, it’s—

“It’s okay, Gai,” Kakashi says. “I didn’t realize you’d be expecting someone.”

“I am...not really. You can come in. I have missed you.”

Kakashi doesn’t move from the wall. His arms drop his sides. “Yeah,” he says, absently. “I...keep expecting you to ambush me with challenges.”

“You hate my challenges.” An over exaggeration. Kakashi would not put up with anything he hated for as long as he has tolerated Gai’s presence.

He watches the way Kakashi processes the words. He hates himself for looking for a flaw in it. The Tenzo in the motion. In the way Kakashi’s fingers curl against the wall. How he raises a hand to scratch the back of his head.

“It’s been a busy couple of days,” Kakashi says. “I should probably go.”

Gai stands. Too quick. Kakashi has a hand braced on his chest before Gai could even dream of reaching him. Fingers pressed flat against the broad expanse. Right against his sternum.

“What are you doing?” Kakashi asks.

“I don’t want you to go.”

“Gai...you’re...”

He shakes his head. Looking up at Gai through his lashes. Chin still tucked against the vulnerable column of his throat.

Guarded.

Guarded.

“I have a confession to make,” Gai says. “I’m afraid I’ve been...rather horrible. And if you. If you were to wish to cut me out of your life forever, I would understand, Ri—Kakashi. I would not hold it against you.”

Beneath the mask, Kakashi’s mouth moves. His nose wrinkles. “I don’t want to hear it,” he says.

He has every right not to. Everyone he has ever let close to him has let him down in some spectacular fashion. And now Gai, who always swore to himself he wouldn’t, has failed him all the same.

“Kakashi, I have to. I need this off my chest. You deserve—“

“Stop talking, Gai,” he says. Final. Sharp. Pointed enough that Gai steps back. Kakashi’s hand hangs in the air. His fingers curl. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“You have nothing to be sorry for, Kakashi.”

His hand drops to his side. Fingers still balled in a loose fist. Then it raises touches the mask where it covers his jaw, right below his ear. “I,” he swallows. Throat in spandex, Adam’s apple bobbing.

“I can’t give you what you want, Gai,” Kakashi says. “I have to go.”

It makes sense. Gai does not try to stop him again. He’s been terrible enough as it is; to add further cruelty would be unthinkable. He turns away. Bites his lip and holds back manly, genuine emotion as he listens to Kakashi climb back through the window.

He’s been awful and he doesn’t know now how to go about making it back up to Kakashi. Doesn’t even know if he deserves too.

He sits down at his kitchen table, back still to the window, covers his head with his hands.

He isn’t sure exactly how long he stays like that.

The snick-click of his window sliding open again startles him from his self-pity. He sits up with a flinch; turns in his chair to see Kakashi once again clambering into his home.

Kakashi.

Back to hear him out, to forgive him perchance.

He’s frowning in the mask. Eye narrowed. Clouded and broody emotion.

Tenzo.

“You’re an idiot,” he hisses before Gai can even open his mouth. Gai doesn’t understand, he shakes his head, begins to stand.

But Tenzo is on him before he can.

Shoves him back down onto the chair with surprising strength.

“An idiot, idiot, idiot,” he repeats. Vicious. More worked up then Gai has ever heard him before.

“Stop it,” Gai says, knocking Kakashi’s hand away when it presses against his chest. A mirror of Kakashi’s earlier, fingers tight to the breastbone.

Tenzo huffs. Pulls the mask down. “You want this,” he says. “You want him. You can’t just be happy with this?”

Gai doesn’t understand. He shakes his head. Tenzo doesn’t seem to care either way. He leans into Gai’s space. His teeth catch on Gai’s chin. Gai cranes his neck back, twists his head away from the assault, from Kakashi’s tongue, his thin lips, his mole.

This isn’t right and he doesn’t want this and he shouldn’t have from the start. He realizes that now—too late, of course, but it changes nothing.

“Stop it,” he says again. Sharper. His hands find Tenzo’s shoulders, his fingers curling on Kakashi’s vest, using his grip like an anchor to keep distance between them.

But it isn’t enough.

Tenzo is too determined and too forceful.

And Gai’s boundless patience is wearing thin.

Kakashi’s weight settles on his knees, Kakashi’s fingers are pulling at his hair. Tenzo, so absolutely desperate to feel needed. So jealous he is reduced to even this.

It makes Gai’s stomach turn.

He shoves Tenzo off, harder than he means to, stands in the same motion. Tenzo lands a heap on the floor. A messy, undignified pile.

Unharmed but—

“You wanted this,” he accuses. The sulk in his tone thick and biting. “You told me you wanted this.”

“It was a mistake,” Gai says. “You are not Kakashi.”

Tenzo stands. He is shaking. The illusion drops away. “You think I don’t know that. I was trying to give you what you wanted.”

What he wanted.

What he wants.

Tenzo cannot give him what he wants.

...Kakashi cannot give him what he wants.

Gai blinks slowly. The conversation from earlier running rapid fire behind his eyes. Kakashi’s hand hanging in the air. The naked vulnerability of his fingers touching his jaw.

“I can’t give you what you want, Gai,” he had said.

The pieces are starting to shift, Gai’s perspective evolving, giving them new angles and new lighting.

Tenzo, who’s motivation has been so clouded and unclear, but has always seemed driven by what he desires. Which ultimately was giving Gai what Gai desired.

“Why?” Gai asks. Shaking his head again.

Tenzo’s eyes narrow. Gai remembers thinking how blunt he always looks, but here, biting his tongue, there is something very nuanced about the way Tenzo holds himself. Trying to keep his secret still, when Gai has already somewhat flushed it out.

“Because he asked you to,” Gai says when Tenzo still has not answered.

“He...can’t give you—“

“What I want.”

Tenzo nods. He seems to fold in on himself. He touches the back of his neck. He scratches his fingers through his hair. Those little, little nervous ticks.

“How long has he known?”

Tenzo tips his head. One way, then the other.

An answer in itself.

Gai should have asked: have you ever met me. It would have cleared up a lot between the two of them. Kakashi’s special case indeed.

“And you agreed to be in the middle of this...mess?”

“I don’t mind it,” Tenzo says. He takes a breath, slow and measured. “There is a lot I would do for Kakashi-sama. This was hardly the worst of what he could ask of me.”

“I’m sorry.”

Tenzo shakes his head. “I meant I enjoyed it. I sort of thought you knew, Gai-san, at least I...you’ve known him so long. And you know him so well.”

An hour ago and Gai would have agreed. Now he feels off-balance. Off-kilter. “I need to talk to Kakashi,” he says.

Tenzo swallows. He shrugs. They both know, without saying it, how difficult it can be to make Kakashi have a conversation that he has no interest in having. The near impossibility of it.

“I thought I was hurting him,” Gai says. “Like everyone else has.”

Tenzo bites his lip. His teeth dig deep into the plump bottom one, a little star of white from the pressure of his canine. “He thought he was helping you. And then suddenly he...realized he wasn’t. You know how...how he can get.”

How he gets.

How Kakashi has always been. Withdrawn to a shuriken-sharp point, honed and deadly isolation.

“I need to talk to Kakashi,” Gai says again. Firmer.

“What will you say to him?”

Gai’s turn to shrug. He drags his fingers through his hair. “That I am sorry. That I have missed him. That I...I misunderstood but it will. It will Never happen again. Not Ever.”

“He won’t fuck you, you know,” Tenzo says. For what it is worth, he says it gently. Sharing a wound. Gai had not been wrong on all counts it seems.

Gai shakes his head. “I...don’t need him to. I value my friendship with him more than. More than that. More than...”

“Anything.”

“Yes.”

Tenzo nods. He shifts, hands slipping into his pockets—Kakashi in the motion though Gai knows it is unintentional at this point—as he leans back against the table. The grin looks wrong on his morose face. The edges are too sharp, self-depreciating.

“At first I think I hated that you loved him so freely,” he says. His head tips. Those soulful, droopy eyes flicker up and down Gai once, then again. “But him asking me to...to meet you like this. I dunno. It’s the most he’s ever shown me his hand. The most intimate I’ve ever gotten to see him and I...I think it’s cuz he loves you too.”

In his own, broken, fucked up way.

Tenzo doesn’t need to say it for Gai to understand the implication. Kakashi doesn’t do things the way that normal people go about doing them.

“I can only hope that he does,” Gai says. “And even if he cannot show that in that way...I—I am grateful just to have him in my life.”

Tenzo’s nose wrinkles at the words. His eyes dart away. “Sappy,” he says. “Sentimental.”

Gai grins.

He wouldn’t have it any other way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There it is folks! Thanks for reading!!

**Author's Note:**

> There’s a second chapter. Maybe a third. This became a beast and I can not control it.


End file.
